This article has been updated since its original publication.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has confirmed that the Olympics will be going forward as scheduled on July 24, despite coronavirus concerns.
“It’s all proceeding to start of the 24 of July,” John Coates, leader of the IOC’s coordination commission for the Tokyo Olympics, told the Sydney Morning Herald.
As noted by Fox News, the announcement comes after Dick Pound, a former IOC vice president, told the Associated Press that the international sporting event’s fate could hang in the balance until the end of May. According to Coates, the IOC never recognized that assertion.
“The IOC didn’t recognize any dates that Dick came up with and I think Dick backed off that as well. It’s all proceeding to start on the 24th of July,” Coates said. “It’s never been the IOC’s position. It was Dick’s idea. There (are) four months to go. Despite a bit of personal inconvenience, I’m very happy that countries are taking these steps that clearly some of the European countries should have taken earlier.”
Coates will be undergoing a mandatory two weeks of self-isolation that the Australian government implemented on all people arriving in the country. Though the Olympics will not be delayed, the qualifying events may be another matter in the wake of Australia banning gatherings of more than 500 people.
“The difficulty for those who have qualified or will qualify is they won’t get any more international competition,” Coates said. “The Chinese are probably the best organized. The Chinese are in various parts of Europe and the last I heard is they’re bringing them all together in a university in Paris where they’ll be fully contained, 600 of them, and they will go straight from confinement there, straight into Japan. They won’t put anyone on a plane who has got coronavirus.”
“They’re all basically in serious lockdown,” he added.
The Olympics persisting as scheduled offers some good news amidst a news cycle dominated by bad news as the American economy comes to a grinding halt due to the pandemic. Over the weekend, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said that the economy will only experience a slowdown, not a recession.
“The real issue is not the economic situation today. The real issue is what economic tools are we going to use to make sure we get through this because this is a unique situation,” Mnuchin told ABC’s “This Week.” “Later in the year, obviously, the economic activity will pick up as we confront this virus.”
In an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Mnuchin also said that Americans could hope to experience an economic revival. “If the medical professionals are correct and we’re doing all the things, I expect we’ll have a big rebound later in the year,” he said. “This isn’t like the financial crisis. This will have an end to it as we confront the virus.”
Over the weekend, Congress and President Trump helped encourage passage of the coronavirus relief bill (H.R. 6201) that will help small businesses and workers during this time of crisis. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, has not ruled out the possibility of total lockdown.
UPDATE: One week after the publication of this article, the IOC announced that the Olympics will be postponed until further notice.